1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to print settings for creating a job information sheet by a bookbinding application in printing using a near-line finisher of the bookbinding application.
2. Description of the Related Art
There has been a Print On Demand (POD) market in which an order of a printed product (such as magazines, newspaper, catalogs, and advertisements) is received from a customer and a printed product is generated from electronic data using a printing apparatus such as a digital copying machine. As to the printed products in the POD market, output products on which processing such as bookbinding, cutting-out, and folding are performed are frequently demanded. To generate such a complicated output product, a finishing device that processes a printed product output from a printer is used. When a printed product is fed, the finishing device performs processing such as folding, cutting-out, and bookbinding. Such a device dedicated to the finishing process is termed an offline finisher in the POD market. A device dedicated to the finishing process, which can communicate with a printer or a personal computer via a network is termed a near-line finisher.
When creating an output product using a near-line finisher, it is important to correctly provide instructions for post-processing to be performed on printed paper. A printed product output from a printer is set to the near-line finisher by an operator (person). Here, to avoid a problem of erroneously setting a printed product or a problem of a setting error in the post-processing, a technique to output paper (job information sheet) separately from the printed product on which the post-processing is performed is discussed by Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2008-33659. On the output paper, information to be set to the near-line finisher is printed.
The above problems can be avoided by a job information sheet, which is output by a printer together with a printed product in the set.
However, there is a possibility that a printed product based on an order from a customer is affected by printing of a job information sheet, so that the printed product desired by the customer may not be output.
While an order from a customer normally contains designation of the final form of an output product and paper type, a job information sheet is a sheet to facilitate a print job and is not contained in the order from the customer. Thus, print settings for a job information sheet are not designated by the order.
In order to reliably print a job information sheet, the paper type designated by an order from a customer is used. The paper designated by the order from the customer is naturally set to an image forming apparatus and thus, a job information sheet can also be reliably printed by using the same type of paper as the designated paper type.
However, for example, when tab paper is used for a printed product set to the near-line finisher, the tab paper will be used for a job information sheet if the job information sheet is printed by using the same paper cassette as that of the printed product set to the near-line finisher.
As a result, the tab paper that should have been used for a printed product set to the near-line finisher is used for a job information sheet, which causes a shift of the tab paper, leading to a possibility that a printed product desired by the customer may not be output (FIGS. 9 and 10).
The tab paper is special paper having a printing area called an ear at an edge of the paper. In a case of A4-size tab paper, its size becomes larger than the A4 size by a portion of the ear. However, the paper size of tab paper when handled by an application or an image forming apparatus indicates the corresponding paper size (that is, A4).
Moreover, to prevent paper mix-up or a setting error, an image of the first page of a printed product set to the near-line finisher may be printed in the “job information sheet”. In this case, if an interleaf is inserted to the head of a printed product for the near-line finisher, images to be printed on a job information sheet may not be present, so that there is a possibility that mix-up of the paper or the like may not be preventable.